The Grad School Chronicles From Application to Graduation. I hope.

Reader demaws commented on my Application List with a few other schools. I figured I should take a quick look at them to see if they’re application worthy:

Carnegie Mellon

Degree: Master’s in HCI

Deadline: January 31st, 2007

Notes: Carnegie Mellon is one of the more highly ranked and prestigious schools out there. Their HCI program is different from many others because it only takes a year to finish. The program runs from Fall of a given year to the Summer of the next. The website states that the program does not financially support its students, but occasionally a teaching assistantship will come up for students with a CS background.

It looks like there would really be no time to do research while taking so many courses in one semester, on top of doing a teaching assistantship! There is a part time option, so I could probably apply with that in mind.

Iowa State University

Degree: Master’s in Human Computer Interaction

Deadline: January 1st, 2007

Notes: Apparently, the HCI program at Iowa State is very highly ranked. I took a look at their website. It looks like they have some interesting courses. For example, “Interaction Methods for Emerging Technologies” and “Organizational and Social Implications of Human Computer Interaction.” Also noteworthy is that that “All students accepted into the HCI program will receive a half-time graduate assistantship.” I’m not really sure what that means. I guess that all students can go part time fully paid. I’ll have to email and ask though.

Also, it seems that they have a pre-application before the actual application. Luckily, the pre application is free, so I’ll probably be taking advantage of that fact.

University of Maryland

Degree: Master’s in Computer Science, HCI Group
Deadline: December 15th, 2006

Notes: Maryland has a Human Computer Interaction research group, but no actual department. Therefore, I’d have to apply to CS and then do research within the HCI group. Their group certainly looks like a lively bunch of people. Unfortunately, the deadline is in… 5 days. So I don’t think I’ll be applying due to time constraints.

Stanford

Degree: MS in Computer Science, HCI Group
Deadline: December 12th, 2006

Notes: Stanford has a pretty rockin’ HCI group too, it seems. Unfortunately, it’s Stanford, and I’m not a perfect robot. Also, the deadline is in two days, which is kind of cutting it close… I’d apply if I thought I had a chance, and if I could turn back time (which would probably look good in my resume).

As a follow up from the last post, I got a reply regarding a few questions I had about Berkeley’s iSchool. Mainly, I just reiterated my concerns about the perceived legitimacy of “Information Schools” opposed to pure Computer Science. I also asked about the availability of funding for Master’s students.

The reply was that the reputation of the program over at Berkeley is rising. Of course, I’ll take that info with a grain of salt, but the person who replied to me said that many companies like to recruit at the iSchool, and had some other facts to back up the claim. My question about funding was answered more indirectly. I was just told that there exist many research opportunities with companies. They also mentioned that Yahoo has a research lab at Berkeley, which is kinda cool.

Overall, I’m glad that someone at Berkeley spent the time to answer my questions. Now I’m just waiting on UC Irvine and Georgia Tech.